Some day, far down the road, we'll be sitting with our grandchildren at our feet. As we rock in our holochairs watching the virtual sunset in our Googlezon immersi-room, we'll get all nostalgic. We'll look back on the period of May to June 2013 fondly, remembering all those memes we posted and those angry diatribes we wrote. We'll look down fondly at those tiny children, busy killing zombies in ActiBethesdaValve-Blizzard's Portal to World of Call of Fallout 6, and we'll say something like the following:

"Little Jimmy, did I ever tell you about the days when I fought and won in the great Microsoft used-game/Internet check-in battle of '13?"

It's a bit too easy to say that Microsoft's surprise reversal of its controversial game licensing policies today was just a reaction to the strident voices of a few on the Internet—that may have been how it started, though. In the high-pressure echo chamber of E3 last week, the unfortunate impression of Microsoft's next system started to leak into the mainstream, getting ink in big namenewspapers and magazines and even getting an applause-grabbing negative mention on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night. When your system is on the verge of becoming a joke for a late night comedian, you know something must be done.

Of course, if Sony followed Microsoft's lead in pushing the same kinds of potential restrictions on game discs, Microsoft probably could have ridden out any negative reaction to its decision. If Microsoft and Sony united on these issues, gamers would be left with nowhere to turn. Mobile and tablet games aren't nearly mature enough, the Wii U is not powerful enough to offer a true alternative for a large block of gamers, and the PC never had used games (and often uses online checks for many titles). Instead, Sony loudly called Microsoft out at its E3 press conference, garnering a huge reaction from both the press and gamers and potentially accelerating Microsoft's reversal.

Many will see today's decision as a loss for the game publishers that are often quite vocal in their hatred for used game sales, which they see as taking money directly out of their pockets. But there are some indications that the publishers weren't really pushing for the kinds of restrictions Microsoft was planning to allow on Xbox One games. In fact, many publishers were seemingly caught flat-footed when the policy was announced. What's more, not a single publisher was willing to publicly say that it would take advantage of the new used-disc-blocking abilities Microsoft gave them, perhaps fearing the public reaction they had already seen Microsoft receive. Without more explicit support from publishers, Microsoft was left twisting in the wind.

A Pyrrhic victory?

Here's the thing, though: we may have all actually lost something in winning today. In his statement, Microsoft's Don Mattrick said the company "imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games" in crafting its original Xbox One licensing policy. It's not too hard to envision a number of benefits that were only really feasible in a world where all Xbox One games were installed to a hard drive and connected to a cloud-equipped Xbox Live account that checked in regularly.

Maybe Microsoft could have created a Netflix style "all-you-can-play" deal that gave players access to a large portion of the system's library for a set monthly price. Maybe a more limited, digital GameFly could allow for rotating, user-selected game downloads that changed every month. Maybe they could have allowed players to loan any of their digital games to anyone around the world for a limited, 12-hour test run as a way to spread the word about an excellent title. Maybe they could have announced a set pricing structure that encouraged downloadable games to drop down to a percentage of their original price months or years after their release.

Here's the problem: Microsoft didn't do any of those things. Any of these benefits remained "imagined," while the benefits that were actually announced were weak tea. Microsoft's "easier roaming" by downloading your games at a friend's house wasn't easier at all—these remote downloads would have actually been much less convenient than just bringing along a disc. The 10-member "family sharing" plan sounded intriguing, but Microsoft couldn't answer extremely basic questions about how it worked. Could two people play two different shared games in your library at the same time? No one at Microsoft seemed willing to say. Being able to play your entire library on your hard drive without having to get up and switch discs is nice, but it's hardly a "killer app" given the drawbacks.

The way Microsoft rolled out its vision of the brave new digital-focused future was full of concrete negatives and only fuzzy, imagined positives. If Microsoft announced some truly revolutionary (and value-adding) digital game sharing and renting policies alongside its online requirements and used game restrictions, maybe the medicine would have gone down better. As it stood, the massive backlash was practically inevitable.

When I got back from E3 last week, I called my mom for a regular check-in. Obviously, I brought up the show and the battle between Sony and Microsoft. When I described Microsoft's game licensing policies to her, she said they were "the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard."

When she asked incredulously why Microsoft did what it did, I found myself fumbling for an answer. Despite recently having a long sit down with Microsoft's marketing chief where he was tasked with answering this very question, I found myself struggling. I couldn't easily explain to my own mother why in the world she should see Microsoft's "digital future" as anything but stupid.

This was, in effect, the problem. Microsoft's moves to slowly strangle the life out of the disc-based game failed the "mom test" because there was nothing strong enough to counterbalance the obvious hassles and annoyances that it imposed. And that's a shame, because it's not that hard to envision the world that Microsoft apparently did, where purely digital game libraries actually let console makers and publishers offer new and interesting ways to get access to their games, in exchange for those disc-based and online-connected annoyances. But Microsoft utterly and completely failed to sell that vision, so here we are.

By the time the next generation of consoles rolls around, we may not be so lucky. High-speed Internet access will be nearly ubiquitous in many countries by then, and the cost and speed of bandwidth will have progressed enough that shipping discs to stores will seem like a costly and slow anachronism (see: record stores, Borders, Blockbuster video). Chances are, by then, the major console makers will finally be bold enough to eliminate physical media from their hardware plans altogether (see: iTunes, Kindle, Netflix, Hulu, et al.).

At that point, no amount of screaming by the principled faithful is going to convince a critical mass of people that they should be able to sell or loan out a product that exists only as bits in the cloud. The major players could easily see fit to just not enable any kind of digital sharing or resale features without too much backlash (see: Steam, iTunes).

So yes, the market has spoken and the Internet won today. The forces that would have changed the way your gaming discs worked were rebuffed and forced back by sheer will. But in another way, we all lost the potential to see whatever Microsoft's vision of the digital future actually was. Instead in all likelihood, we'll eventually get a digital future that looks a lot like the digital present—only without any discs at all.

Promoted Comments

If MS REALLY wanted to do what they said they would, they could have kept both parts, download only games would function as previously described with all the check ins, disabled if you can't check in, and family sharing, while disc based games would be playable with the disc in the drive, playable offline and have the ability to be resold, traded, etc.

They didn't need to choose an "either/or."

The trouble was it wasn't about "teh future!" It was about killing off GameStop and securing extra revenue for the publishers (which would then heap MS with exclusives). But keeping both worlds, digital with the extras and physical media with the rights, doesn't kill GameStop. If it really was going to be a transitional phase from physical to digital media, they would keep both.

They could still implement those neat sharing features as a perk of games purchased through XBox Live. It would be a nice little push to get people to buy digitally while still acknowledging people who have shitty internet and can't do much with it. No one misses out on new games that come out, and they still get to toy around with the new features in a way that could be acceptable for the masses.

Which is it, folks? Is disc-based DRM king of gaming and the mandate of the people, or is digital sharing a good thing that, thanks to a combination of HORRIFIC PR and band-wagoning, isn't coming anymore?

I think the point is that we want to see rights retained AND see progress in distribution and use of media.

People recognized the problem with physical sales since it was clear that MS was taking something away, and people generally GET physical sales. You can hold it in your hand, so you should own it.

The conundrum here is that 100% digital distribution today (and in the forseeable future) gives the consumer ZERO rights. Someone else gets to decide what you do with your property. It's not limited to games (and it's not purely limited to digital distribution, though that's the biggest problem)

You can opt-in to daily checks if you want to play without the disc. If you lose internet you have to put the disc back in.

For disc resale, flag disc based installs on your account that are opted in so that when you uninstall the game the license is released. GameStop or whoever is still going to have to verify somehow that the license was released, though. If there was a unique id in the disc they would be able to put the disc in a reader of sorts that connects to Xbox Live and verifies that it's free and clear. That only works in retail scenarios, but GameStop could offer a disc check for a small fee for when you sell your disc to a friend. That sounds like an extra step for friend to friend sales, sure, but that's only if you opted in to play without a disc. They would do the check regardless if you are selling to them.

(The previous two points could be hard to implement so not allowing to opt in for disc-less play would be OK.)

Keep all of the sharing options (10 family members etc.) for digital downloads and disc based installs that opted in. If the game owner goes offline, make the disc based shared games unavailable.

Allow the Kinect to be turned off unless a game requires it.

Drop the price $50. $100 is too big of a gap. A $50 difference is easier to justify, especially if Xbox has more to offer for going disc-less.

I would love to see this implemented, it would be the best of both worlds and I would recommend the Xbox One to every one I know, no matter their preference or internet situation.

It seems that they could have had a much more nuanced change in their DRM policies. We could have had the best of both worlds - an in-between place between what we had last generation and what we're getting in the next.

My guess is they were running out of time to control the snowballing bad PR. This was playing real-world havoc on sales projections and the need for a strong launch. They were forced, then, to retreat back to the easiest policy imaginable: the status-quo.

Once they have time to think it through, we'll probably see some of the more progressive, consumer friendly, ideas come back.

40 posts | registered Dec 3, 2002

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

465 Reader Comments

So much for the "necessary" and "essential" DRM for the "future of gaming." If reversing is this easy then it never needed happen in the first place. Those earnest, evasive, used-car salesman tactics were all for show, it turns out.

I don't get it -- why does setting up a subscription service for downloadable games require MS to be arses about disc-based copies? Second-hand and shareable DVDs don't seem to have made Netflix impossible...

Here's the thing, though: we may have all actually lost something in winning today. In his statement, Microsoft's Don Mattrick said the company "imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games" in crafting its original Xbox One licensing policy. It's not too hard to envision a number of benefits that were only really feasible in a world where all Xbox One games were installed to a hard drive and connected to a cloud-equipped Xbox Live account that checked in regularly.

That's not true, though. There's nothing preventing Microsoft from giving the same benefits they were going to offer to digital only content.

Seriously, just imagine if they instead were like "Even though you are paying the same price to buy games digitally as opposed to the disks, our infrastructure allows you to loan these games to your friends, just like you could loan them your disk."

By leaving disk games working as they always have, but providing a way to loan your digital content out, they would have actually provided a BENEFIT for having regular check-ins. Even if it wouldn't necessarily need to occur; if you go online to loan the game, then go offline, your console is going to think you don't own it until you go back online to retrieve the game.

And there's nothing about this change to their policies to suggest they couldn't do this, either. To go whole hog away from their purported "benefits" gives the impression that they're trying to punish consumers for not mindlessly jumping on board.

Pre-ordered the Ps4 after e3 and look forward to playing Destiny on it.

I just can't trust even this reversal after all the drips and dribbles of data. Even MS couldn't seem to understand their new policy. If they couldn't, why should I get a headache trying to figure it out?

maybe i am too ignorant to understand the wonders that would have been WBone 180 but...Sorry Halo. You just aren't a big enough selling point.

But Sony, who actually had a reversal and took away features they promised AFTER people bought a product....you can trust them?

yes, more points that are well known. As a consumer, the damage IS done. how are we to trust that they won't re-implement this a year or two down the road? using sony as an example of a company with a big head, why should I trust microsoft to NOT do the same?

or am I to trust that the patent they hold on visual DRM for movies etc won't be put into use sometime down the road when someone like the mpaa says "okay hit the switch guys!!"

You do know Sony can do the same damn thing with a simple firmware update right? DRM (ok good DRM may be but anyways) isn't rocket science and even Sony said that they won't stand in the way of any distributor that deploys DRM.

This reaction almost seems childish. I think they missed an opportunity to show the future by allowing sharing of games that were downloaded. I don't understand the all or nothing. I would have liked to have seen this scenario: I can share downloaded games, when I do, I have to opt in for the duration of the sharing to the 24 hour check for the games being shared. Non-shared and disk games work without a connection.

They could still implement those neat sharing features as a perk of games purchased through XBox Live. It would be a nice little push to get people to buy digitally while still acknowledging people who have shitty internet and can't do much with it. No one misses out on new games that come out, and they still get to toy around with the new features in a way that could be acceptable for the masses.

I think the problem is MS got themselves caught up internally with how to transition to a disc-less future while still having discs, and tried to reinvent the wheel, which I will call for the sake of argument, Steam.

Having a "not-invented-here" attitude when steam sits over there with years of customer liked testing and refinement is just pure folly.

MS's plan was flawed form the get-go, and the current situation is a pure cop-out instead of going for a middle ground thats more akin to the wheel.

I honestly cant imagine they focus tested this if they think any of the reactions were a surprise either.

(Of note, I was for the way xb1 was doing things, at least over the ps4/current way)

The next challenge is going to be dealing with digital-only software ownership. There's very little logical reason you shouldn't be able to transfer your digital copy to someone else.

Based on recent history I see absolutely no evidence that battle will go sanely.

Physical reselling has some features content owners like. Built-in obsolecense (that copy WILL die eventually), physical limitations (difficult to transfer instantaneously, which puts some limits on how often it can be realistically "sold" or "lended").

But with digital-only distribution, they're talking out of both sides of their mouths and convincing people they can have everything - 100% control.

For the mentally lazy, they manage to convince people that ownership of digital media is different since you can't hold the thing in your hand. So why WOULD you own and control and be able to resell your property?

For others, they use the "license" argument - you're not buying anything. You're being temporarily LEASED a copy of their software and they retain full control. The consumer retains zero rights. Copyright becomes even more of a way to not only TEMPORARILY protect artists against theft, but to control everything about what you can do with that content.

That is a bad, bad, BAD bad bad sign for the future. I don't see anything changing with it without either government intervention (not likely) or someone to screw up in this area, big time. Like, 10x the XBone disaster.

All of the problems we complained about with XBone exist, today, with digital sales. MS (and Sony) see digital distribution continue to climb are simply waiting for physical distribution to recede.

Which is it, folks? Is disc-based DRM king of gaming and the mandate of the people, or is digital sharing a good thing that, thanks to a combination of HORRIFIC PR and band-wagoning, isn't coming anymore?

It's "news website <insert many sites' names here> sees opportunity for editorials to increase likelihood of click-throughs, so tailors its message to attempt to maximize them."

Broadband isn't ubiquitous enough, or fast enough (on average) to make what Microsoft wanted to do something everyone who would buy an xbox could enjoy.

PC users are used to it with Steam, but If people can't buy a game, go home, pop it into their console and be playing within 5 minutes, they're going to be ticked off. The whole point of a console is to be able to play right now, turn it on sit down, get your game on. We've already lost a log of that to DLC and games that need to download content to play.

If you're on a mediocre connection like DSL or Cable in a large city where you're sharing with a few thousand of your closest strangers (because that's all you can get where you live) the attraction to consoles fades pretty quickly when you know you'll have enough time to go do other things that are more 'instant' than that new console game that just came out. Like make a meal, eat a meal, read a few comics, or just play something on your phone or tablet, or PC, since that Steam download you let run overnight ought to be done now.

Personally I think it should be illegal for them to say that they've "sold" you a game if they're only granting some ridiculously limited lease. They should be required to say "rent" or "lease". That might help slightly with peoples' understanding of the problem.

One huge issue that was also not addressed by MS was game retailers. A lot of the digital only downloads would have stores like Amazon and Gamestop screaming. So would the huge racks of used games at Gamestop which would dry up. A Steam like system cannot be launched on ANY console as long as there are game retailers out there. It will change, but slowly. I can remember going to Gamestop to buy a PC game disk, something that I have not done in years.

For others, they use the "license" argument - you're not buying anything. You're being temporarily LEASED a copy of their software and they retain full control. The consumer retains zero rights. Copyright becomes even more of a way to not only TEMPORARILY protect artists against theft, but to control everything about what you can do with that content.

And even this is fading. The EU holds licenses to be resellable under First Sale, no different then if it was a physical product.

Why does everyone assume that a 24 hour check is necessary for game sharing?

Even if it is, why assume that the check-in must be required out of the box? Just make it so you have to opt-in to the online requirement to be able to share games. And that's just me being lazy and listing off the first solution to come to mind. I'm sure if you thought about it, you could come up with an actual elegant solution.

No, that has nothing to do with why they removed family sharing. It is one of two things: being petty and making it an "all or nothing" deal, or being unable to get publishers on board with the idea if the whole ecosystem wasn't locked down.

When she asked incredulously why Microsoft did what it did, I found myself fumbling for an answer.

Because they thought they could get away with it. And they were so sure of this they didn't even bother trying to put a dress and lipstick on the pig.

The really stupid thing is that if you believe the future is nearly all digital (obviously they do, and so do I) then it's extra petty and stupid to try to clamp down on physical disk sharing or used game sales now.

Sony handled this right - they restrict digital games as much as MS does, but almost nobody cares. So instead of taking away rights everyone is used to having (negative), they just nudge people towards that digital door (positive).

And all the sharing things they were talking about are certainly possible with digital games, if they really want to offer that.

Still won't be buying one. But, I think all this drama could have been avoided if they had simply not put an optical drive in the thing. Games would be download only, and retailers could sell key cards or the like and the buy/sell/trade online would have been heralded as a great innovation.

But trying to impose digital rules on physical things? Just dumb. No ones going to go for that. Even if it makes the most sense in the world (to some people at least), and we all understand that the disc is just a delivery mechanism (try explaining that to the average retail shopper who cares about as much for "computer stuff" as I do NASCAR), they're still not going to go for that.

I still hope they try to implement the buy/sell/trade for downloads though, eventually put something in place to turn discs into downloads, and by the first hardware revision, they won't even need to include the drive (and if by that time I'm not forced to hook up a kinect I don't want, I might change my mind).

Which is it, folks? Is disc-based DRM king of gaming and the mandate of the people, or is digital sharing a good thing that, thanks to a combination of HORRIFIC PR and band-wagoning, isn't coming anymore?

I think the point is that we want to see rights retained AND see progress in distribution and use of media.

People recognized the problem with physical sales since it was clear that MS was taking something away, and people generally GET physical sales. You can hold it in your hand, so you should own it.

The conundrum here is that 100% digital distribution today (and in the forseeable future) gives the consumer ZERO rights. Someone else gets to decide what you do with your property. It's not limited to games (and it's not purely limited to digital distribution, though that's the biggest problem)

One huge issue that was also not addressed by MS was game retailers. A lot of the digital only downloads would have stores like Amazon and Gamestop screaming. So would the huge racks of used games at Gamestop which would dry up. A Steam like system cannot be launched on ANY console as long as there are game retailers out there. It will change, but slowly. I can remember going to Gamestop to buy a PC game disk, something that I have not done in years.

I cannot wait for GameStop to go out of business. They add 0 value to buying games (in fact for me they make it an almost completely unbearable experience), they con people out of their own personal gaming histories, and actively help the games industry make more and more same-ol-bullshit games that get sales only through marketing instead of any kind of research or scrutiny, or caring beyond the superficial.

Maybe thats the price to pay to grow the industry, but I don't think it was worth it.

Here's the problem: Microsoft didn't do any of those things. Any of these benefits remained "imagined," while the benefits that were actually announced were weak tea.

I've no pony in this race, being mostly a pc gamer, but that quote reflects my original sentiment on this whole affair. Remember "Ultimate Extras"? I don't think many people will ever thrust Microsoft to deliver on some imagined future benefits.

I really hope Microsoft makes this digital era a reality in the near future and uses their extra time to come out with a well polished and working platform. Their plan was far from a failure the way consumers made it out to be, but it was not a stunning success in its current incarnation either.

Executives need to get out of the way of the engineers and let them build a real system that combines the best of gaming, entertainment and computing. And I'll give you a hint, it doesn't include a Kinect front and center in every living room.

Just a small note.. At least here in Canada there was a used PC game market for a time .. That is until game companies were somehow able to take it away.

There was definitely a pre-owned market for PC games in the UK too. I used to pick them up at blockbuster. This was of course before the age of Steam (which more or less made pre owned games pointless for me) so I don't know if anyone still does them but I doubt it.

Second hand market for PC games died some time ago. There are, as far as I know, two main reasons behind that:* Banned Half Life / Counterstrike CD Keys, so you might buy a game that you could not play online (I am talking about CS 1.2 era)* One time CD/DVD Keys tied to a given online account, for example any Steam (e.g. Half Life 2), GFWL (e.g. Bulletstorm) or Origin (e.g. Mass Effect 2) games

After all, you cannot slide a new game DVD into your computer and expect to play it inmidiately.

they're trying to right their wrongs, this is good for the consumer because the consumer (im speaking for a lot of people, but im making assumptions) doesnt like to be get dicked.

MS wanted to do things in a very negative way...it isnt regression to keep them from putting their users in chains...we dont want to push so far ahead and find ourselves up the creek without a paddle and wanting to go back and fix things at that point...let them fix their mistakes now and we can move forward in a better way

the xbox change literally means nothing when their games still use cloud rendering or cloud AI.....

really this is too little too late. the damage has been done and I will still be purchasing a ps4.

So lemme get this right, the Xbox One wasn't even released yet, and its damage done.

Meanwhile Sony got hacked and did nothing about it for weeks. Shut down LikSangHad a wonderful rootkit debacle and the related "damage control" which amounted to "why should users care"Killed OtherOSRemoved hardware after hardware from each PS3 iteration

Yet Microsoft's damage for an UNRELEASED product is "damage done".

Wow, we live in a strange world.

Funny how the memory works.

I'm disappointed in the changes announced today. As are a good number of my friends (not all mind you, but a lot).

I agree that this may be a pyrrhic victory. Okay, yeah, banished are the consumer-hostile region locking, 24-hour checkins, potential for publishers to prevent resale and so on. But with it goes that consumer-friendly "10 friends" library sharing online thing.

What bugs me is that I really only heard about the "10 friends" sharing thing while the dust was settling from Sony's massive backhand across the cheek of Microsoft at E3. Why didn't MS shout the library-sharing from every rooftop before and during E3 and try to drown out the concerns about disc-sharing and online checkin?

Library sharing could have been a massively consumer-friendly innovation for the direct-download age.

Next thing you'll know, people will be telling me I'm a damn fool for preferring paper books when I could buy wonderful DRM'd ebooks and pay monthly, forever, to stream all my music rather than ripping CDs and having to manage my music collection!

Kinda? I stopped buying physical media a few years ago and have never been happier. No more DVD/Blu-Ray/CD binders or towers, no more worrying about which hard drive contains which library from which computer, etc... I just log in to my monthlies (Spotify and Netflix) or my PS3 media server and everything is there on my phone, laptop, and TV. For games, I download titles from Steam or PSN. I can't remember the last time I actually bought a disc (new or used).

I really liked M$'s vision of always on content that follows me, even if they were...following me...

And there's a simple reason Microsoft didn't promise all the cool things you envisioned, Kyle: it's not up to Microsoft to tell publishers how to sell or rent their wares. They are a hardware and firmware middleman for the most part.

Except that's nonsense. Microsoft is also a major publisher in its own right on Xbox. Microsoft was quite happy to talk about the [limited] resale options that it was supporting, and those were only for Microsoft-published titles. The company certainly could have talked about other things it planned to do with its new (and now sadly defunct) Steam-like platform.

Good and fair point. Though that is a dangerous move since the other partners may well have viewed it as Microsoft now intending to encroach further on their turf. In-house publishing is tolerated in the industry, but I don't know about in-house publishers being given tons of 'perks' like rental that make their games even more appealing. I could see publishers balking at that.

Why does everyone assume that a 24 hour check is necessary for game sharing?

Because it was likely a requirement of the publishers to let Microsoft implement this feature. I don't personally think it's a physical requirement. I just don't think Microsoft gets to make that decision.

Here, let's imagine a "sharing" feature with no always-on. I add you to my friends list. I share a game with you. You sign on, download the game, and start playing. Then, you take your system offline. I remove you from my "family" and add another person. Et cetera. I can essentially create infinite copies of the same game, as long as those people play those games offline.

Personally, I think the way I thought it would work made sense (it only requires online if it's a shared copy and you don't have the disc in the tray), but I can see why a digital sharing system with no online check would scare publishers.

Why are we assuming that just because discs now work liked the used to.. All the "Cool" "Useful" features of the licensed model are disabled? There's no reason you shouldn't be able to download your game to your friends console to share.. Or share with your family.. or any of the other Digital options you had before.. assuming you have internet access to 'verify' the DRM..

Want to play something offline or disable the online checks? Sure thing!! you just better have that disc available to play. works just fine.. gets best of both worlds.

Because according to news.xbox.com the feature is disabled, there is no reason to assume, they actually said the feature is gone. It was either we install the game, migrate the license to the cloud and no longer need disc-verification (instead online verification like steam) to get online game sharing or return to the archaic media-in-tray required disc authentication PC abandoned over a decade ago and lose the digital sharing. Just read the article on the Xbox website if you are still confused.

Just a small note.. At least here in Canada there was a used PC game market for a time .. That is until game companies were somehow able to take it away.

There was definitely a pre-owned market for PC games in the UK too. I used to pick them up at blockbuster. This was of course before the age of Steam (which more or less made pre owned games pointless for me) so I don't know if anyone still does them but I doubt it.

Used games were always a thing here in the US too, and to some extent still are even today. I've got no idea where Kyle came to the conclusion that no such thing ever existed for PC.